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Three Percent #190: John Barth

In honor of two recent John Barth reissues—The Sot-Weed Factor and Chimera, both Dalkey Archive Essentials—John Domini (The Archeology of a Good Ràgu, The Color Inside a Melon, and this appreciation of Barth, among other works) and Max Besora (author of the intro to Sot-Weed Factor along with the very much Barth ...

TMR 20.1: “Then You Do Not Approve of Nabokov?” [MULLIGAN STEW]

Chad and Brian kick off the new season in near hysterics over the first little chunk of Gilbert Sorrentino's Mulligan Stew. From talking about the rejection letters—and near batshit reader's report—prefacing the book, to all the bad writing about the "flawless blue" sky, to the ever-changing dialog tags in Anthony ...

“The Lecture” by Lydie Salvayre and Linda Coverdale [Excerpt]

Today's #WITMonth post is an excerpt from The Lecture by Lydie Salvayre, translated by Linda Coverdale, a wonderfully funny and playful French writer who Dalkey published for quite a while (The Power of Flies, Everyday Life, The Company of Ghosts, Portrait of the Writer as a Domesticated Animal), and might again! Warren ...

Season Twenty of the Two Month Review: “Mulligan Stew” by Gilbert Sorrentino

As mentioned in this Reading the Dalkey Archive post, Mulligan Stew by Gilbert Sorrentino is going to be the next book featured on the Two Month Review podcast. For anyone new to this podcast, episodes drop weekly—recorded live on YouTube, then disseminated as a traditional podcast through Apple, Spotify, etc.—and ...

Christmas Eve at Dixie Truck Stop [Dear Editor]

In the early 2000s, a number of issues of the Review of Contemporary Fiction featured "Letters to the Editor." It was a poorly kept secret that all of these—the letters and responses—were written by John O'Brien. Obsessed with failing marriages and sad sack lives, these letters are wonderful bits of satire and voice, ...

Nothing Adds Up Until You Overthrow the System

It's weird trying to write this today, May 31st, with all that's going on across the country—and around the world—right now. The images of our overly-militarized, super aggro, disgusting police officers running unarmed people over, throwing women to the ground, shooting teenagers with pepper balls and rubber bullets (that ...

. . . At the End of the World

All below quotes are from The End of the World Might Not Have Taken Place by Patrik Ouredník, translated from the Czech by Alexander Hertich (Dalkey Archive Press) THE FUTURE OF THE WORLD The future isn’t what it used to be. You must have noticed this yourself: the future isn’t what it used to be. In the past, ...